How to Change the Theme in Cygwin

Why Use Cygwin?

I have been a long time Putty user when logging from my Windows to GNU environments. It works great, but sometimes I just want the feel of a Native Command Line.

Enter Cygwin….

Cygwin is an open source tool that allows POSIX like environment naively from Windows. Cygwin runs on most Windows machines and is a distribution of GNU. Just like with Putty Cygwin allows for customization of the tool through themes. There are a few tricks to customizing the theme versus Putty that give developer/administrators more options. Let’s step through developing and changing the default theme in Cygwin.

Changing Themes in Cygwin

Step 1 Install Cygwin

Step 2 Install Mintty

Step 3 Open Cygwin Options

After installing go to Cygwin options – Looks. Go to the 4bit theme generator or select ‘Color Scheme Designer’ to be director to 4bit Theme generator. The theme generator allows you to use prebuilt schemes or create your own custom shell. For my environment I created a custom theme with a slightly dark purple background.

Here’s my custom Cygwin Theme

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BackgroundColour=15,0,51

ForegroundColour=217,230,242

CursorColour=217,230,242

Black=0,0,0

BoldBlack=38,38,38

Red=203,103,123

BoldRed=229,179,189

Green=123,203,103

BoldGreen=189,229,179

Yellow=203,183,103

BoldYellow=229,219,179

Blue=103,123,203

BoldBlue=179,189,229

Magenta=183,103,203

BoldMagenta=219,179,229

Cyan=103,203,183

BoldCyan=179,229,219

White=217,217,217

BoldWhite=255,255,255

Step 4 Download Or Copy .minttyrc

Once you have selected or developed your customer Cywin theme select the ‘Get Scheme’ button in top right. The file type you need to export is mintty (.minttyrc). If you have trouble getting the file to export just right click to open in new tab and copy the configurations.

Step 5 Overwrite Or Edit the .minttyrc file

Extremely important step and one that I always forget (which is the reason I created this post), where to edit theme file. If you download the .minttyrc file move and overwrite the file in the Cygwin64/home/[username] directory. Alternatively you can just edit the existing .minttyrc configuration file.

Awesome Themes

The ability to customize themes for your console is one of my favorite things versus staring at a generic white or black terminal. Use the 4bit Theme Generator to build your own custom theme or search around to find one that suits your style. Post screen shots of your terminal in the comments below. I’d love to see what other developers/administrators are using.

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